Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

  The weather at Centurion was not promising from the outset and Hussain put South Africa in. On a truncated day they made 155 for six. For the next two days it rained and on the fourth the ground was too wet for any play to be possible. With one day left, there seemed hardly any point in turning up. Discussions were even rumoured about putting on a one-day game.

  But the fifth day went ahead, with South Africa still continuing their first innings. During the morning we saw Nasser Hussain running off the ground to have talks in the dressing room. Then, after nearly two hours’ play, South Africa declared at 248 for eight. To our amazement it was announced that England had forfeited their first innings (pedantically it was 0 for no wicket declared, but no one took the field for it) and South Africa their second innings. England had been set 249 to win in 76 overs.

  The story gradually filled in. Hansie Cronje had made the offer to Hussain before the start of play, but Hussain wanted to see how the pitch was behaving after three days under cover before he committed himself. When he had done so, he ran off to strike the deal with his opposite number.

  Subsequently we know of the involvement of Cronje with match-fixing for bookmakers, but then most of us were innocents. Test Match Special Report even awarded the ‘Champagne Moment’ to both captains for their initiative. Only Michael Atherton in the England dressing room, who knows the betting world, was uneasy. Cronje’s job for the bookies was to make sure that, even after so much play had been lost, there was a positive result either way.

  I believe that he was not fixing the match to the extent of handing it to England. I think that he reckoned South Africa could win. What he had to avoid for his bookmaking masters, though, was England shutting up shop to secure a draw if things started going badly for them. That meant a few risky ploys had to be tried.

  South Africa had gone into the match without an injured Allan Donald and they lost the services of Paul Adams’ left-arm spin before it had been used. Nonetheless at 102 for four, a draw looked like England’s best option. Michael Vaughan joined Alec Stewart and their fluent stand of 126 put England in sight of victory. There was a nervy little clatter of wickets as the last twenty runs were gathered, but with five balls to spare, Darren Gough despatched Nantie Hayward for four and the match was won by England by two wickets.

  In the post-match euphoria, Hussain paid tribute to Cronje. Not many months were to go by before he was to feel that the win was severely tainted, as the depth of the match-fixing corruption began to emerge.

  Naturally, we hoped that that tour would be a one-off as far as commentary rights were concerned, but it later transpired that the deal that Talk – now known as Talk Sport – had done with South Africa was for two tours and also that they had concluded similar agreements with Pakistan and Sri Lanka for England’s tours there the following winter.

  To compound the problem of covering a tour without commentary rights, the day before my scheduled departure for Karachi in the autumn of 2000, I got a call from my office to say that my Pakistan visa had been refused. It seemed in the end to be just someone in the Pakistan High Commission objecting to a travel agent’s courier bringing in a stack of passports for rubber stamping and preferring to vet applicants – particularly journalists – face-to-face, but it meant postponing my flight to Karachi for 24 hours.

  This trip, setting off in October 2000, was the first time we had taken the Nera ‘World Communicator’ satellite dish, which was to change our touring lives. While not being our main route for covering matches, because it is expensive to use, it provides us with the ability to deliver unscheduled pieces from places not otherwise equipped for broadcasting.

  A couple of years before, I had asked our engineers to tell me how news correspondents could report in perfect quality from refugee camps in Africa and they had explained the satellite system, but had said that the equipment was the size of a fridge and frequently not permitted to be used. Evidently it had been refined, because I was issued with something the size of a heavy laptop. I was a little apprehensive of getting it through Pakistan customs, but they didn’t turn a hair.

  As in South Africa, the first problem at any ground was trying to establish the best place from which we could broadcast our reports and the TMS Report at the close of play. Before the arrival of Aggers on the tour, I would be doing those programmes solo for the one-day internationals, as presenter and producer, with interviews supplied by Pat Murphy.

  The first floodlit game in Karachi was certainly a harsh test, with a late finish and difficult working conditions in an open stand. The noise was deafening and, when I came to pack up all the equipment, I discovered that someone – even in the area where we were sitting, which I was told was occupied by police officers’ families – had cut through the cable to steal the effects microphone.

  Happily, after that, the match referee for the series, Barry Jarman, decided that the dew was having too much of an adverse effect on these floodlit games and that therefore there would be earlier starts for the rest of the series. That obviously made my deadline a great deal easier.

  Relations with Talk Sport on these tours were never antagonistic. These were, after all, in many cases old colleagues. I see one note from my diary on the day of the second one-day international in Lahore.

  Friday 27 October 2000

  As I was setting up our position on the balcony, Chris Cowdrey sportingly pointed out that an advertising banner hung across the railings in front of us would mask the outfield to a large extent. So, when I was deploying the effects mic., I also re-hung the banner for them.

  The Talk Sport engineer was very helpful too. Though I had often called on the host broadcaster’s engineering assistance at the matches themselves – at least in the early days – I had never at that stage been granted the luxury of travelling abroad with an engineer, a situation that had always tested my rudimentary grasp of the technical side of things. But, when it came, for instance, to replacing the connection on the end of the cable that had been cut in Karachi, Talk’s man, Nick, came up trumps. He was, as he pointed out, a freelance anyway.

  His production team, however, did almost gloat over one problem that we had in the early stages of the tour, when the satellite equipment developed a fault.

  The three one-day internationals done – and won three-nil by Pakistan – England were playing their first first-class match of the tour, a four-day game in Rawalpindi. As the game was starting, a report into the currently hot topic of match-fixing was released in India. In the report an Indian bookmaker claimed to have paid Alec Stewart for information. After 48 hours of speculation and rumour and the England press officer’s statement of denial, Stewart called a press conference.

  It was to be held back at the hotel after the day’s play and inevitably Radio 5 Live were keen to broadcast it live. Unable to rely on the faulty satellite dish, I was put on the spot when the request from London came.

  Thursday 2 November 2000

  I took a snap decision that, provided I could get hold of a phone, I could do it. Back at the hotel I asked the staff if there was a phone in the conference room. ‘No,’ I was told.

  So I had to gauge whether I could reach the reception desk with the leads I had. However, while I was trying to work that out, they found a cordless phone for me to use. I was a bit nervous of it, but a test with London seemed to sound all right. So I was able to run a microphone from the desk at the front, another for Pat Murphy to put his questions and a third to catch any other questions I could reach in the body of the room. Then I patched the mixer into the cordless phone.

  It was all a bit Heath Robinson, but, remarkably, it worked and the quality was evidently good enough for Five Live to stay with it for twenty minutes. Just after I’d had a very pleased editor on the line from London, one of the Talk Sport people commiserated with me, thinking that we had not been able to broadcast it. It turned out that we had carried a good deal mor
e of it than they had.

  One other moment I remember rather poignantly about that match in Rawalpindi was getting a call through to my father on his 80th birthday. It was to be the last time that I spoke to him. A couple of weeks later, just as I returned to the hotel in Lahore at the end of a day’s play in the first Test Match, I received a call from my mother to say that he had died in his sleep. She had – typically not wanting to be a nuisance – waited until the end of the day’s play to tell me.

  Naturally, I flew home, finding the local Pakistani travel agents with whom we were dealing immensely kind and understanding, as they helped me to rearrange plans.

  The BBC team had a council of war before I left, to decide who we might best request as a replacement for the different roles I had to perform. The technical side threatened to cause the most problems, so we asked for our regular senior engineer on Test Match Special in England, Andy Leslie.

  Fortunately, all the teething troubles we had been having with the satellite dish seemed to have been sorted out and our usual mode of operation for the TMS Report programme was now to set up a little group in some open area of the hotel premises where we could get power and light. A digital editing machine carried the commentary highlights and interviews.

  Thus I was at home in England a fortnight later when I received a call from Christopher Martin-Jenkins in Karachi. ‘There’s a scene in front of me you would be very familiar with,’ he said. ‘Andy Leslie is surrounded by about ten Pakistani telecom engineers trying to sort out the problem with the line.’

  ‘So where’s Aggers reporting from?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s had to go and sit by the boundary rope so he can get a line on the satellite.’

  And, while I could have a little chuckle at missing that performance, I was sorry only to be able to watch on television England’s dramatic win in the dark in that Test Match. Though I gather I would not have been able to see it so well, had I been there in the flesh.

  Rather like the South African board, the Sri Lankans, who were England’s hosts for the second tour of that winter, had simply refused to discuss rights with us, for fear that Talk Sport would, as they threatened, withdraw their offer.

  This time the Sri Lankan customs were a bit more sticky about the satellite dish, but their original demand for a bond of £5,000 in cash came gradually down to just needing my business card, which I found much more reasonable. I had to promise to come and see them when I left at the end of March, to prove that I was taking the equipment home.

  After a couple of games in Colombo, we headed down the west coast to Galle, where the first Test was to be played, through a coastal area that would be devastated a little less than four years later by the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004.

  There was another warm-up game at Matara, a little further along the road that curves round Sri Lanka’s south coast. For this a number of us in the press party were staying at a quirky hotel on a promontory overlooking a magnificent beach at Weligama. It had a terrace, which was to prove very valuable as a broadcasting point when a tropical downpour washed out play at Matara one day.

  Aggers had a room overlooking what looked like a tempting swimming pool. From his window he watched CMJ take his regular morning swim and then, as soon as he had left the water, he was replaced by a troupe of monkeys, who preferred to use the pool as a lavatory.

  It was at Matara that the Talk Sport team turned up in order to have a full dress rehearsal before the first Test. It also provided the only instance I have ever seen of a large monitor lizard holding up play when it wandered across the ground and the players decided to give it a fairly wide berth.

  Sunday 18 February

  During the course of the day, the hitherto much admired Vrai, one of the media managers of the Sri Lankan board, came to tell me that during the Test Matches we would be allowed to do reports totalling no more than two minutes an hour.

  I told her that our reciprocal agreement with Talk allowed for eight minutes an hour. She said that she would need a letter from Talk to that effect. Fortunately the Talk Sport producer, Jim Brown, was happy to oblige, but the board seem to be getting a little bullish about our presence.

  At an official reception before the Test, in talking to various officials, including the president of the Sri Lankan board, Thilanka Sumathipala, I was left in no doubt that they felt they might have missed a trick by not demanding rights money from us as well as Talk Sport. Media managers who had previously been friendly were now being a little stand-offish.

  As in Pakistan, to put together our highlights for each day we had to record a commentary on every ball, known in the business as ‘stop/start’ commentary. If nothing happens, you can delete the recording on the digital machine immediately. If a wicket falls, or significant runs are scored, you have to make sure you catalogue it so that you can find it later.

  For the Test Match, we moved our hotel to a resort – Hikkaduwa – where we had the sort of problems we encounter in the Caribbean of working out of a holiday hotel. At least the time difference did give me the chance to get back there and set up the equipment in the grounds – in the case of Hikkaduwa this meant some pleasant gardens by the sea. The west coast of Sri Lanka is very conveniently situated to lock onto the appropriate satellite for a broadcast signal.

  After a little bit of reluctance to co-operate from the board officials, we were allocated a rooftop position at Galle’s International Stadium from which we could report and record our snippets of commentary.

  On the first morning of the Test there was a muttered remark from one of the media managers about agreeing an ‘access fee’ for the BBC. I started to get the impression that they were spoiling for a fight.

  Thursday 22 February 2001

  ‘We need to talk about this,’ I said to Vrai, but she carried on sorting through tickets, ignoring me. After five minutes of that, her boss, Shaan, appeared and I tried him. But he, too, looked through me as if I wasn’t there.

  After a minute or two of that I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a job to do. You know where I am.’

  And, apart from Vrai stalking past our point a couple of times, that was the last I saw of them for the day. Maybe sanity has prevailed.

  Friday 23 February

  We arrived at the ground in the morning at 8.30 and unloaded the kit from the car under the gaze of four security guards, one of whom showed us that he had a letter, which apparently told him not to allow any BBC personnel through the gates.

  There followed some unseemly scenes, in which Shaan and Vrai informed us that we had done more than two minutes an hour the previous day (which we hadn’t) and that we had not paid an access fee (which they had refused to discuss the previous morning). They refused to listen to any counter argument.

  So we were left in the dust outside the gates.

  Tim Lamb [then chief executive of the ECB] had offered a few days earlier to provide any help if we needed it, so I rang him, but his mobile was switched off. It seemed to be an impasse.

  I despatched Aggers, Pat Murphy and Radio Wales’ Edward Bevan to the walls of the Dutch-built Fort, which overlooks the far end of the ground. We loaded the kit into the boot of the car and our driver, ‘Simmons’, took them round there.

  I told Aggers to be meticulous about keeping it to two minutes an hour, even though he would now be outside the ground. He could set up a position on the battlements from where he could see the middle and the scoreboard, and I just hoped he would have enough battery in the mixer and the satellite dish. Of course, I told him, he could go to town on describing the scene outside the ground.

  I settled down outside the gates to await developments and to try to talk to someone. The England media manager, Andrew Walpole, brought me drinks and a chocolate bar from the dressing room and I made friends with the security guards who were keeping us out. They – unlike their masters – were courtesy and charm p
ersonified and one even shared a sandwich that he said his wife had made, filled with vegetable curry. Another found me a stool to sit on.

  Press photographers took pictures of my predicament and then went off to snap Aggers in operation on the fort walls.

  The crucial point was the arrival of Tim Lamb, shortly before the lunch interval, after a morning spent negotiating a change of hotels. He suggested to the Sri Lankan board that this spectacle did not reflect well on cricket and got them to let me in.

  Tim then pulled together a meeting, which involved the Sri Lankan officials and the television rights holders for the series, Nimbus. They spoke to their boss in India and it was decided that we could carry on for this Test Match and discuss it further before the next. Faces have been saved all round, I suppose.

  Tim was rightly pleased with his intervention. ‘The ECB gets something right – for once!’ he declared.

  The Sri Lankan Board then offered me lunch in the VIP box, which, with a reporting position to set up, I had to decline, but Tim’s wife, Denise, handed me her binoculars. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can see Aggers up there on the battlements.’

  I reported to Five Live from our position and heard Aggers do his last piece from the ramparts, before we were reunited.

  We had to decide for the evening how to handle TMS Report, particularly having managed to collect only one recorded highlight. So I opted for a tabloid man – Mike Walters of the Mirror – and Patrick Eagar, as a senior snapper and former chairman of the Cricket Writers’ Club, to set our row in context and Vic Marks to deal with the cricket.

  For the rest of the Test Match the board officials ignored us completely, though my friends the security guards gave us a huge smiling welcome every morning and even helped with the unloading of the kit.